This afternoon the Senate Committee on Homeland Security will hold a hearing on virtual currencies, followed by a Banking Committee hearing Tuesday. Judging from the witness lists, lawmakers will hear the usual warnings about how Bitcoin and other digital monies facilitate money laundering, online underground drug bazaars, Internet gambling and worse.

Representatives of the Bitcoin community, meanwhile, will make the case that heavy-handed regulation would drive innovative businesses out of the U.S. "The U.S. jurisdiction has to do a lot to make themselves appealing," Jon Matonis, the executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation (and a former BankThink columnist), told me last week. "They're definitely not appealing right now."

The industry is already feeling a "chilling effect," he said, in the form of "the unwillingness of American banks to do any business with Bitcoin-related companies in the U.S." The banks are "unwilling to cause themselves any more scrutiny. They're way overstaffed on compliance attorneys as it is. How can you have innovation in banking when 30% of the staff is attorneys?"

Longtime American Banker readers may roll their eyes, having heard similar arguments about the danger of losing business to more-lax jurisdictions in so many other contexts (e.g. derivatives, bank capital). But I would take a different tack. I'd argue that Bitcoin, for all its baggage, should be allowed to flourish because it's good for banks, good for merchants, good for America and good for humanity.

Before you scoff, hear me out. Here are five reasons Washington should refrain from putting any further screws on Bitcoin:

Bitcoin Raises the Bar for Banks

As my colleague Kevin Wack recently reported, last year the country's largest banks torpedoed a plan to speed up payments on the automated clearing house network. The Federal Reserve Board, he noted, now has doubts about the banking industry's ability to implement a faster payments system on its own and may try to force change. Here is where Bitcoin could provide some healthy competition, by demonstrating to U.S. consumers what is possible with money in the Internet age and making them clamor for something similar from their banks.

A transaction on the Bitcoin network takes 20 minutes, on average, to be confirmed. Then it is done: Control of the bitcoins (lowercase "b" when referring to the currency or unit of account) has been transferred and recorded in a public ledger known as the block chain. No reversals. In that light, it's pitiful that Nacha, the bank-owned association that sets rules for the ACH system, couldn't garner enough votes among its members to pass a proposal for same-day settlement.

Shakil Khan, a venture capitalist who was an early investor in the music service Spotify and is investing in Bitcoin-related businesses, put it well in a "fireside chat" with yours truly at a conference this summer:

Why is it in 2013 I can send you an email, a voicemail, or text message, but if someone says 'you owe me $10 for my pizza last week' and I try to send it, the bank wants to charge me $27? You might get it next week but it isn't guaranteed. We have a banking system that's slower than it's ever been.

Granted, cashing out bitcoins for dollars or other national currencies is a huge hassle. But that says more about the cumbersome nature of the legacy financial system than about the Bitcoin network, which debuted in 2008 and is available to anyone with an Internet connection. Moving your money in and out of Bitcoin is like visiting both sides of the Berlin Wall during the Cold War, or going from black-and-white Kansas to Technicolor Oz and back. The more people experience that contrast, the more they'll expect from mainstream financial providers — and if the banks fail to deliver, the more political cover the Fed will have to push them.

Bitcoin Is a Low-Cost Alternative for Merchants

It is also true that while light years ahead of ACH and Western Union, that 20-minute wait for Bitcoin confirmations is awkward for in-store retail purchases. Depending on the size of the purchase, a merchant who accepts Bitcoin may be taking a risk if he lets the customer walk out before the transaction is confirmed. But arguably he's already taking that risk if he accepts credit cards, since from a merchant's point of view the transaction isn't really done until the funds are placed in his account — which could be two or three days later in the card world.

In other ways, Bitcoin can be a compelling alternative (or supplement) to Visa, MasterCard or PayPal for merchants, particularly independent online merchants. For starters, there are no acceptance fees (Bitcoin has an optional transaction fee for senders, typically the equivalent of a few pennies, to expedite payments). And merchants who are put off by the notoriously volatile exchange rate between bitcoins on dollars don't have to take the currency risk. They can elect to hire a processor like BitPay, Coinbase or BIPS, which will take immediate possession of the bitcoins on a merchant's behalf and remit the equivalent in dollars or euros. The fee for this service is around 1%, which still beats 2% to 3% for credit card payments. So merchants can reap the benefit of Bitcoin without having to worry about the price of bitcoin — at least, as long as those processors are around.

Also, Bitcoin does not allow chargebacks. That theoretically provides less protection for consumers, but on the flip side, it means more protection for merchants. Sometimes, consumers can be fraudulent and merchants are defrauded. Unquestionably, fraud protection is part of the value for consumers of using a network payment card like Visa or MasterCard. But protection from chargeback risk and consumer fraud is one of the advantages for a merchant of physical cash or digital cash like Bitcoin.

A merchant that only takes cash or Bitcoin, or charges extra to accept payment by credit or debit card, may drive away some business, but that should be the merchant's choice. A consumer who wants the protection (or the loyalty rewards) of cards may find no merchants in certain categories willing to accept his preferred payment method, or may have to pay more for the certainty at some merchants. But that should be the consumer's choice. The situation I am describing here, in which parties with differing preferences negotiate to reach mutually agreeable outcomes, is called a "market."

Bitcoin Helps Protect Privacy

Much has been written about the anonymous, or pseudonymous, nature of Bitcoin (whose mysterious creator went by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto). While the block chain ledger details every single transaction for all to see, each party is identified only by a Bitcoin address, a cryptographic string of numbers. It's up to users whether to identify themselves publicly as the owner of a particular address. And you can generate as many addresses as you want.

It's easy to see where the laundering concerns come in. I've previously argued (here, here, here and here) that user-defined anonymity is a virtue, not a vice, and I stand by that. But for the sake of argument let's say we agree with Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, that it's important "to make sure records are being created" so there won't be "terrorists, narco-traffickers engaging in actions that prosecutors someday could never find out about." (That quote, from an interview he did with Bloomberg News, reminds me of the character in Dave Eggers' dystopian novel The Circle who says "all that happens must be known.")

Well, the block chain itself is, as I said, a record — permanent, transparent and continuously updated as transactions are added. And most if not all of the online exchanges where bitcoins are sold for dollars are now following anti-money laundering and know-your-customer requirements. That means getting identification and keeping records on customers, and reporting suspicious activities or large transactions to the government. The result is that the authorities have a pretty good ability to trace a Bitcoin transaction to a real person.

Hence, Bitcoin is "a terrible, terrible tool for breaking the law," said Constance Choi, the general counsel for Payward, the parent company of Kraken, a virtual currency exchange platform.

At the same time, she noted, Bitcoin allows innocent users to securely transact online without transmitting personally identifiable information. If The New York Times were to accept Bitcoin, people could buy a 25 cent article on the web without having to worry about having their name and credit card number stolen.

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The very reasons stated for leaving bitcoin alone are the very reasons government will not leave them alone.

Posted by CrediTrust | Monday, November 18 2013 at 3:03PM ET

This is a fascinating evolution of digital payments where a new currency is emerging. Perhaps very compelling is that when the government seized bitcoins related to the Silk Road criminal case - they also valued the bitcoin in hand - thus taking a critical step in acknowledging it as a legitimate currency. Likewise they can sell that when completed (at last note they held somewhere around $25 mil US in bitcoin). It is critical that as we support innovators and disruptors in other fields that ultimately move markets and benefit customers - I would agree bitcoin should be allowed to flourish and accepted as a currency. You cannot tell me there will be anymore corruption issues with bitcoin then we see in other major currencies.

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